Friday, August 24, 2012

I know he may have doped. But it's a comic tragedy what
they're going to do today, retroactively from the vantage
of many years after the fact, stripping Lance Armstrong
of titles won.
This is the result of bureaucratic zealotry. By people who
mostly don't know the pain and sacrifice of competitors
involved in world-class competition, who are in a utopian
daze about rooting out all irregularity in sports.
Looking through their rose-colored lenses from ivory towers
and deciding to "correct" the record books, they have done
nothing of the kind.
Are the #2 finishers of the seven Tours from 1999 to 2005
now to be subjected to the same rigorous scrutiny by their
nations' anti-doping policing bodies?
No, they will not.
Why care about the Tour de France now? The so-called "winner"
is in jeopardy for life, perhaps even in the afterlife(!), of
losing his medals and place in history. The national pride of
an entire country destroyed. The fans subjected to a mockery.
The winner on the road really just enjoys the "first right of
refusal"!
America, where we emasculate our heroes and envy success....
Those who hate America are abetted and empowered by our self-
loathing. It fits the current Obama template perfectly, of
America as just another lousy average no-BFD place to live.
No better than Cuba, Liberia, or Pakistan.
I hope the little men and women of the US Anti-Doping Agency,
with their white lab smocks and their self-important internal
memos, feel real proud of their accomplishment today.
Their ilk doesn't like winners anyway. Just losers. In the
sterile world of academia, from whence this decades-old witch
hunt emanates, nobody should be a winner. It's unfair.
Success is random. It doesn't come from hard work. "You
didn't build that." If it wasn't the anti-doping thumbscrew,
it would be something else. This is just the means of
destruction du jour.
The rest of the world is laughing at us.
Just like when we failed to take out Saddam in Desert Storm.
Or failed to interdict the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Or
continue to fail at stemming Iran's nuke program.
America has been doing this passion play for more than a half
century.
Now we've perfected it.
We play nice with Rules According to Hoyle, minding all the
treaties scrupulously, and worried about our image at the UN,
while we flaggelate ourselves for success. Can China steal
intellectual property? Hell yes. Can the OPEC monopoly screw
us on oil prices? Hell yes. Can Russia foil every attempt in
the Security Council to help the Syrians take out Assad?
Hell yes.
So, now it's just another part of American life to form a
circle and shoot a volley at ourselves. No sense of
togetherness or unity or nationalism.
It's not leadership or rectitude to police doping that may
have happened in some cases decades ago, and line up
witnesses for a star chamber proceeding. It's rot from
within.
You want to catch a crook, catch him shortly after the act.
This is a principle enshrined in English and American common
and statutory law: limitation on the window for prosecution.
Not to forgive the illegality. Not to bless the crook.
Not to condone the wrong.
But because there needs to be a limit on relying upon frail
human memory for "evidence", limits on the police to dig into
the past, and limits on prosecutors seeking fame and
leverage.
Even bank robbers have statutes of limitation. And we didn't
watch them on international TV going up mountain roads in a
yellow tunic with throngs of racers peddling madly behind
them. Lance won within the milieu in which he raced. The
sanctioning bodies were able to test him at the time and did
so.
The fact is the successor "winners" of the seven Tours who
will inherit Lance's position because of today's larceny are
not proven to be any cleaner than Lance. And their purity
will never be tested. So in reality it means nothing, except
a negative: Nobody won those Tours.
And yet somebody did. But American officialdom sees fit to
destroy what was once good and wonderful, in the era of The
Great American Apologia.
How low we have sunk.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Could it get any more obvious that The One will sink to any low and pander to any audience to get re-elected?

View it through the lens of the recent Presidential half staff flag proclamations.

Within a day of the shootings at the Colorado cinema and the Wisconsin Sikh temple, He-Whose-Full-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Spoken (HWFNSNBS) issued White House orders that all post offices, government buildings, military installations, and privately flown American flags be lowered to half staff.

Ostensibly this was done due to the multiple death nature of the two slayings. Thus the precedent seems to be, in classic over-the-top Obama fashion, that if many die, it's worthy of memorializing. If it's "only" one or two crime victims, well, no flag. Just like FEMA views emergencies worthy of "management". Only the big ones. If you lose your house outside of a mass incident, Pffft!

When did we start lowering the flag in memory of crime victims anyway? Why don't we just manintain the flag in permanent half staff position, if that is the new policy? Or better yet, order all flag masts to be cut in half and then raise them to the top and leave them there! That way, we're all dumbed down to the same altitude - a perfect liberal "solution".

Anyway, there is another much more disturbing precedent being set by HWFNSNBS, that being:

"Civilian deaths are way way more important than military deaths, y-all."

Because less than 1 week after the six deaths at the Sikh temple, six United States Marines were killed in a single mass murder. Six in Wisconsin on August 4. Six in Afghanistan on August 10.

All 12 equally dead. First six were in peaceful worship. Second six were deployed overseas on orders of HWFNSNBS to serve their country while earning no where near the income/benefits package of the average new-hire SEIU member.

The first six, flags ordered half staff the next day.

The second six, nothing.

The first six, a big presidential PR statement, complete with diplomatic phone calls, including a personal call by HWFNSNBS to the Indian Prime Minister. (Completely odd that. If an American of German descent is killed, will HWFNSNBS be calling Chancellor Merkel?)

Can you imagine being a Marine at a lonely base on the front lines in Afghanistan, and lowering the flag for six murdered US civilians one day. And then later the same week, after the murder of six of your Marine regiment in the line of duty, nothing?

Outrageous.

It couldn't be just the regularly expected Oval Office disrespect for military service and sacrifice, could it?

How about about not wishing to remind voters there's a shooting war on?

I think so.

And the dominant media is on board with that. Obama the Osama Slayer. Obama The Drone. But Obama the Attrition Trench Warrior? Uh, no. Not that image, please. No hushed silent images of KIA runs on the Sunday Shows any more, or gets published in USA Today. That was for Bush.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

As the two political parties resolve their differences over Socialized Medicine, henceforth known here as "BarryCare", one notices two major questions left unaddressed by the Medi-Uhhh and the politicians.

While the D's seem hellbent on jamming a Canadian-style system down our throats, the R's are largely not opposing the general concept. The main part of the fight is over "how much" rather than "whether this is stupid or smart".

The insurance industry turncoats up on the stage with Obama are the same crowd as HillaryCare's "industry advisors" from years ago, perps like Kaiser Permanente. They are whistling in the graveyard, my friends. Because once there is coverage for everyone, who needs 15 or 20 different HMOs?

Inevitably, they will be consolidated into a single payer system, run by the federal borg. So the gambit for the insurers is simply to "get onboard" the inevitable change "train" and to ride it to the end of the line: their corporate armageddons. But meanwhile, they'll make money while they can. And sell us out.

Thus, Un-Answered Question #1: Is this a stupid idea?

Well, heck yes, it's stupid. The same dull people that run the Post Office, hand out Social Security, monitor Wall Street, modernize the FAA, keep the roads nicely paved, and oversee the banks are going to be in charge of your Health Care!!!! Are you insane?

We expect the D's to look at this as more AFSCME voting jobs, purely from their selfish Big Brother point of view. They can't grow government big enough. Now DC even has Federal Motors and sets executive pay for bankers! Neat!

But I cannot abide the deafening silence and acquiescence of the R's. Most of them drank the grape Koolaid during the Bush 2 years, and voted in that idiotically expensive, non-means-tested, and wasteful prescription drug plum for the senior citizens. And back further, Bob Dole's goofy ADA "civil rights" law. All of which stepped the R's closer and closer to socialized medicine.

Un-Answered Question #2: Why is Health Care a "right"?

Exactly where in the Constitution is the Congress empowered to "save" us from poor health, or to disgorge one person's money for the personal benefit of another person's bodily functions?

No where.

And exactly why are we starting with health care anyway? It's certainly not the most widely needed service to maintain life! What about Universal Food, Universal Water, Universal Shelter, Universal Clothing? Go without the first two for a week, and you're dead. Go without the last two for a day, and you get arrested.

Why don't we start with a baseline Universal Food Benefit? Everybody gets to go to the grocery store and hand over a non-means-tested plastic card to "purchase" all the basic food items needed to sustain us in the "manner to which we have become accustomed"?

Did you laugh?

Don't.

That will come as surely as the Founders would have laughed over Universal Health Care in Constitution Hall back in the late 18th Century.

Monday, May 4, 2009

The joke is that Fiat can't even run Fiat, much less anything else. Fiat's quality control and product choices were so atrocious it left the American market in disgrace. Every single Fiat 850 was eligible for a recall.

No, not a recall to fix anything on the Fiat 850. But a recall on the entire car!

Evidently, the 850 was half-rusted as it made its way across the Atlantic on containerships, its frame so weakened after a few US winters, that the company was forced to buy them back. All that could still be found, that is.

Then Fiat escaped America, away from U.S. DOT's safety rules and construction standards, for its native Mediterranean climes.

Fiat's other big division, Alfa Romeo, likewise couldn't cut the mustard in the American marketplace, and dejectedly wandered back to Europe. That leaves Fiat's only product currently for sale in America: Ferrari. Now there's a mass-market success story! (huge eyeroll, here)

This is the best Obama can offer the American taxpayer for our $Billions of bailout cash?

The Prez said Chrysler wouldn't go bankrupt if we floated Cerberus, the private equity firm that owns Chrysler, all that jack. Turns out the Three-Headed Hound of Cerberus: Robert Nardelli, Barack Obama, and the UAW's Ron Gettelfinger, have been whistling in the graveyard since February.

It was a foregone certainty that Chrysler would go into bankruptcy. And a certainty that we, the taxpayers, will ultimately be funding comparatively luxurious retirements for UAW pensioners, while the rest of us scrape by.

No. I say, if Fiat wants Chrysler, let them pay for ALL of it. The pensions, the healthcare, and the rest of the obligations Chrysler made to various creditors.

I sure damn well didn't make any of those promises, nor did 99.999999% of my fellow citizens. If the UAW wants to get the retirement money promised to its members, that is no concern of mine. The UAW isn't looking after my needs or those of my family. Why should we be expected to stand in the shoes of Chrysler and make good on promises we had nothing to do with?

A private contract negotiated between the UAW and an auto company has NOTHING to do with the taxpayers of this country.

We forked out bailout $Billions that we'll never see re-paid to the Treasury. That's enough blood money, for Chrysler, for Fiat, for the UAW, for Cerberus.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

You could almost hear the titters and snickers of the credit card company executives around the table.

Last week they were getting lectured by the Imperial POTUS hisownself, one Mr. Barack Obama, about honesty, transparency, straight talk, easy-to-read terms, and lots of advance notice of changes.

Ha, Ha, Ha.

Would that Barack lived up to his own sturm und drang!

Honesty? During the campaign he said no lobbyists (a stupid promise, but he made it, he should keep it). He said he would be a deficit hawk, "going line by line" to cut government spending. Yeah....

Transparency? Obama stuck in $634B in health care earmarks to begin "universal health care", aka, the end of quality health care in America. He did this with no debate, no explanation, and no details provided.

Straight talk? This from the Euphemism President? To whom terrorism is "man-caused disaster" and the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban is "an overseas contigency operation".

Easy to read terms? You mean like during the passage of the $787B so-called Stimulus Package, where no one was allowed the time to read the ARRA Bill? And Obama's buddy Arlen Specter helped shut down Senate deliberations so The White House could ram the spending through without anyone knowing what was in the legislation.

Advance Notice of changes? Another broken Obama campaign promise, specifically that he would always allow a 5-day "cooling off" period before he would sign legislation, so that new spending and laws would be fully understood.

With all his bluster, Obama is shamelessly pushing for a Credit Card Bill of Rights, while ignoring the Bill of Rights we already have.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

You want to know why BHO and Janet Napolitano are shouting down anybody who asks about shutting down the border to the Mexican N1H1 Swine Flu?

It's real simple: They can't shut it down.

Well, OK, they could, but not right now. The US Government simply doesn't have the means at hand to quickly and effectively shut down the border in an emergency. Almost 8 years after 9/11. Still can't do it.

Make that, still don't want to do it. Not for protection against terrorism. Not for protection against pathogens.

Obama and Napolitano use the following moronic quip to deflect such questions (this is a direct quote): "It's too late to close the border because the horses have already left the barn."

Can you believe that?

Why don't we game this one out a little? Let's change the deadly threat from a virus (which has tallied well over a hundred deaths at this early stage) to, oh I don't know.... something really scary..... um..... how about armed Al Qaeda bombers?

Now let's apply the Obama Template to this new threat. Both the virus and the bombers have a track record of KILLING PEOPLE. Both are coming in from Mexico. Some use official entry points. Some use illegal frontier crossings.

Now, let's hear the quote again: "It's too late to close the border because the horses have already left the barn."

So logically, what The White House is saying is, once a deadly threat has entered the country, then you might as well let more of that threat in, "because the horses have already left the barn."

Huh? So let more sick people in? Because just like armed bombers, once you have a few inside the country, you may as well let in as many as wish to come?

If that isn't the most pathetic and lametudinous excuse for "preserving, protecting, and defending" the United States, then the Oath Of Office now means nothing at all.

That Obama's first 100 days is capped off by this Brobdingnagian failure to grasp his Constitutional responsibilities portends a VERY rough 1360 additional days. Europe has shut down travel in and out of Mexico. They have even advised against travel to the USA, since we don't control our border and are basically "North Mexico". Mexico itself has cancelled school, closed malls, and called off public events.

But our border is open for bidness as usual.

Obama is literally risking our deaths in exchange for election succor with the illegal alien voting block. That's his value system on full display. It's all about Him.

He's willing to see people killed to stay in office. Plain and simple.

[Newsflash Update: This morning Joe Biden let his own horse out of the barn, when he advised staying off any enclosed public transportation, where coughing and sneezing could vector H1N1 into your lungs. He said he advised this to his own family - stay off planes, buses, and trains. Huh. Well, now he's backpedalling of course. Because this doesn't fit in with the OPEN MEXICAN BORDER policy during the now-Level 5 Pandemic, which allows as many coughers and sneezers as wish to come to the US. Because of the scientific "the horses have already left the barn" guidance we have from our CDC, White House, and Homeland Security.]

There's something culturally sick about the eastern metropolis. 9/11 merely brought it out into the open.

Following 9/11, where hijacked airliners were used as guided missiles to take down the two tallest buildings in New York, killing thousands, you'd think a lot of unity would ensue. Yeah, you'd think.

Because you're probably normal. But it's not normal in NYC.

Had an attack of such a scale been launched on a normal city, oh say, like Indianapolis, or Omaha, or San Diego, or Tampa, or Nashville, here's what would have happened:

1.) The city's residents would have blamed the attackers for the attack.2.) The city's male population would have swarmed military recruiters.3.) The city's victims would have been cared for by fellow residents.4.) The families of the victims would have directed rage at the attackers.

But the sad tale of NYC was thus:

1.) Residents and media blamed America for causing the attack on America.2.) Relatively few NYC men enlisted in the war against Al Qaeda.3.) Victims expected immediate, fullsome federal care for all their needs.4.) Victim families directed rage at Bush, queing up for $1M government checks.

I don't need to tell you how insulting and unappreciative the NYC attitude was to the rest of America.

The sassy "Jersey Girls", hands on hips, demanding bigger US Treasury money pay-outs and postulating insane rumors that "Bush knew ahead of time" and just wanted an excuse to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. Their ridiculous 9/11 Commission ended up producing nothing new, with mental giants like Jamie Gorelick and Richard Ben-Veniste onboard.

(Gorelick, along with Janet Reno and Eric Holder, largely CAUSED the Commission's major finding that the FBI and CIA didn't share terrorist intel. Because of Gorelick's own policies of separation! Talk about foxes investigating the henhouse.)

Then came the manpower for the Terror Wars. It didn't come from NYC. It largely came from the South, the Mid-West, and the West. I knew patriotic young men entering college that September as freshmen, who had never even been to NYC, that quit college and enlisted in the USMC. I went to the funeral of one who didn't come home.

There was no "Thank you" note from NYC at his funeral. There was no $1M check for his little sister or his parents. Yet he gave his last full measure of devotion for us, for NYC, and for his country in Al Anbar Province.

And he did it knowingly, in the prime of his youth, with a clear vision of his duty to defend his countrymen like his forebearers had done. His mother and father didn't "go Sheehan" and disparage his memory. They didn't "Michael Moore" his sacrifice. They honored him as comparatively few NYC denizens would know how to do.

So it's a laugh to me that NYC citizens scurry like rats beneath President Barack Hussein Obama's big blue and silver airplane.

They betray their real motives about 9/11. And it has nothing to do with saving their country or defending their fellow man (the major exception being the gallant firemen of the FDNY who ran "in" while the officeworkers ran "out").

No. The pictures sent around the world this week of scared NYC workers and homemakers calling 911 and screaming at the sky say one thing quite clearly: It's all about me.

Protect me. Pay me. Take care of me. Me. Me. Me.

They remember 9/11 because it was about "Me".

Whereas, to the young Marine and those who love him and honor him, 9/11 was about "Us".

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